


Counterfeit Apathy

by Wisperwind



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Ava is also terrible but maybe slightly less so, Don't copy to another site, Illnesses, Janson is terrible as always, M/M, Maze Runner Reverse Bang 2019, Newt is an assassin, TMR Reverse Bang, Teresa is ambiguous, Thomas is a medical researcher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-11-23 22:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20897042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisperwind/pseuds/Wisperwind
Summary: Newt has been an assassin so long that he has forgotten how to be anything else. That's fine with him though. It makes his job easier when he cares about nothing.Thomas has been working for WCKD his entire career, researching illnesses and searching for cures for rare and obscure diseases.When Newt gets the mission to take Thomas' life, they find out that their work overlaps a lot more than either of them knew.orThey meet twice before one of them learns the other's name. By that time it's almost too late.





	1. Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be finished already but the story ran away from me and then I messed up my hand so it's chaptered now. Chapter 2 to follow asap. I apologise for the inconvenience
> 
> This story was written for the [TMR Revers Bang 2019](https://mazerunnerbang.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The photoset that inspired this story can be found [here](https://newtparadise.tumblr.com/post/188035904035/the-maze-runner-reverse-bang-2019-newtmas-au)

**NEWT**

  
  


The air smells of dust, paper and cheap vending machine coffee. The day before had been a long day at the end of a long week at the end of a long month in what was shaping up to be one exhausting year. Be that as it may, Newt had been successful, and so earned a day off in the eyes of his boss. He took advantage of it by retreating to one of his favourite hiding places in the city. Maybe ‘hiding place’ is a misleading description, seeing as the university’s library is filled with people at all hours of the day and security cameras are watching every crevice.

However, there is a certain kind of solitude that can only be found in the anonymity offered by a public place. Nobody here knows who he is, or cares why he is here. A student obviously on the verge of a nervous breakdown had asked Newt a while ago to watch over his belongings while he left to get some coffee, and had not yet returned. Newt doesn’t mind. It means that he is blending in well enough.

This is, granted, not a difficult feat, seeing as the rest of the work areas, reading nooks and sofas were occupied mostly by university students and personnel. At this point Newt should be too old to be mistaken for a student himself. Should be, but he’s blessed with one of those faces that always looks younger than his actual age. No one pays him any mind in any case. Newt possibly could have walked through the entrance covered in blood and the only thing anyone might have wondered is if he is a biology major who’d had a particularly rough day at the lab. 

It is the reason why he likes this place so much. Surrounded by a quiet energy, the unmistakable bustle of life, it lets him feel like he is part of society that he usually exists on the edges of. 

He sips his coffee and winces as the cold bitterness hits his tongue. A quick glance at his watch tells him that it is now early afternoon. No surprise then, that it has turned to room-tempered sludge. He’s been here for hours.

He puts his cup down, stands up and stretches, mentally debating if he should get someone else to watch the laptop that isn’t even his, or just leave. 

He hasn’t come to a decision yet when a shoulder unexpectedly connects with his from behind, making him jerk forward. Instinct has him straightening up into a ready stance and grabbing for whoever it is that had sneaked up on him, but the man is already out of reach and hurrying down the aisle of shelves, muttering something about test results and unusual replication times.

A student? No. Like Newt, the man seems too old to fit the profile. Newt stares after him for a second, then curses himself silently for letting his guard down so far that a bloody civilian could take him by surprise. It’s his downtime, yes, but that was just embarrassing. He frowns, curiosity overtaking him, and decided to follow the guy and see what had brought him here to disturb Newt’s afternoon.

Finding the guy again is easy enough. While the library interior is structured in a way that implies that the architect would rather the people visiting starve to death inside than find an exit, Newt has been coming here one and off often enough to know navigate the endless stairs and corridors with ease. Besides, he’d only lost sight of the man for a moment.

He finds him on the third floor, head stuck in what seems to be a recent edition of an advanced medical journal, muttering and occasionally taking notes while chewing on his lip. 

Newt glances around and notices that the only possible place from which to observe the man without attracting attention - a plush, blue armchair next to a tiny coffee table - to be occupied by an undergrad who is using the free library wifi to play a game on his phone. Newt takes half a second to imagine all the ways he’d be able to end the guy’s life if he was on the job, and then channels those thoughts into a glare that sends the kid scurrying away, leaving half his things and Newt with a comfortable new spot to people watch from. Or person watch in this case.

This isn’t an unusual occurrence. Being used to long surveillance missions and needing to make detailed observation about targets is part of his profession, and Newt finds that it pays off to keep the habit up even during downtime. He often finds a place for himself in a cafe, a park or a library like this and picks a person at random whose life he’d pick apart by observation. 

The guy who’d somehow managed to bump into him is obviously working in the medical field. If it weren’t obvious by his chosen type of reading material, the lanyard he’s wearing and the badge that’s dangling from it, would have been a rather large clue. It proclaims him to be a member of WCKD Medical Research Laboratories, a local facility that partners with the university and is mostly known for cancer research. His name however is printed in too small lettering for Newt to decipher it from where he’s sitting.

The next half hour Newt spends watching the researcher hurrying from shelf to shelf and he does his best to notice little clues about the man that he’d normally deem immaterial, if this had been an actual assignment. 

The man is ambidextrous, wears comfortable shoes consistent with a job that requires more standing and walking than sitting, keeps his mobile phone in his briefcase, rather than the back pocket of his jeans, probably wasn’t married (there was no ring), somewhat around Newt’s age, and his focused frowning was adorable.

Newt allows himself that last thought only because he’s sure he will never see the man again. It is the truth however. The man is objectively good looking, so the fact that he is unmarried would indicate a personal choice rather than a lack of potential partners. Of course Newt is aware that a lack of a ring is no definite argument for or against the man’s marital status. He could have a girlfriend, or left his ring at home for whatever reason. Internally, Newt wonders why he cares about this at all.

He gives himself a mental shake and focuses again on the original reason for why he had picked this person to observe. The man is tall, and thin in the way of people who work too much to exercise or eat as often as they should. He’s very light on his feet, moves almost soundlessly in his sneakers on the carpet and that at least partially explains why Newt didn’t notice him earlier. 

Eventually the man seems to find the information he was looking for and hurries away. Newt stays in his armchair and closes his eyes, leaning back. If he’s lucky it will be some time until his next assignment and he’ll be able to settle for a while.

His phone buzzing kills that idea almost instantly.

  
  


* * *

  
  


A lot of people say they hate their jobs. Technically, Newt thinks he has it better than most. He’s working a highly skilled job in a small field, so there’s no shortage of labour. Small to non-existent chance of being laid off. He even gets dental coverage, to an extent. Really, it’s not that bad. That is, if you can ignore the existing-at-the-fringes-of-society part and the fact that, should anyone ever find out what he does, they’d look him away in a dark cell somewhere and throw away the key. At best.

It’s not like he didn’t choose this. People don’t become a highly skilled assassin by accident, no matter what action movies with dubious morals and more explosions than necessary may imply. He’s not here because he’s forced to be. He could walk away at any time. It’s just that for now what he is doing is better than the alternative.

Newt watches his target through the scope. She’s alone in her office on the 48th floor of some big name bank or another. There are no family pictures on her desk, but he takes no comfort in this. No matter what some may say, there’s always someone grieving when a person dies. Why this woman has to die today, Newt has no idea. He learned a long time ago that it’s easier not to ask.

He slows his breathing and empties his thoughts until he knows nothing but the feeling of cold gunmetal in his hands, dusty air in his lungs, wind vectors and distances from this window to hers, until the woman on the other side of his rifle is no longer human, but a paper doll. Until Newt himself has become nothing more than an instrument of her death. He pulls the trigger in the half second between inhale and exhale and half a mile away a woman dies.

Newt disassembles his gun, cleans it and stores it away in his sports bag with the practiced ease and calm of routine. He’s far enough away from the bank to take his time, and his target was alone, so if he’s lucky he will be out of town before her death is even discovered. He wipes the windowsill, picks up the bullet casing, takes all necessary steps to make sure no one will ever suspect that this half finished skyscraper a dozen blocks away had anything to do with the death of Kathrine Raynswrigh. Then he looks out of the window one last time and leaves.

He likes it best this way, when things go off without a hitch. It means that Janson will be pleased with him and Newt has learned very early on that Janson being anything less is not something he will survive for long. 

People might not fall into becoming highly skilled assassins by accident, but young boys land in the wrong kind of foster home all the time.

* * *

**THOMAS**

  
  


“This is ridiculous. You know that, right?”

Thomas pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath, trying to stifle off the headache before it can start. He would love his job, if only it were a little less gruesome at times.

In front of him is a shelf and on it a row of 12 cages containing 12 dead lab rats, all of whom had been infected with V1374-C, the virus Thomas and his team had been studying for the last year.

“At least they died slower this time. That’s progress.” says Teresa, one of his coworkers and co-lead on the research pertaining to this particular virus. Thomas knows that while she might appear emotionless, the rings under her eyes and the exhaustion on her face are belying the flatness of her voice. Thomas isn’t in the mood to be cheered up though.

“I know! I know. This thing is still ridiculous though! Do you know anything else that kills you in this many ways? Don’t answer that!” he adds quickly when he sees her open her mouth. “Every time we manage to treat one symptom it feels like a new one crops up instead. It’s like a hydra. Are we sure this thing isn’t mutating?”

“The genetic structure of the pathogen is comparatively stable. But you don’t need me to tell you that. The thing is not changing on us, we just haven’t found out all of it’s tricks yet.”

“After 19 months of research, yes. What a comforting thought. I’m just glad we haven’t seen many cases of humans infected with this yet. If this ever evolves airborne contagion we would have an epidemic on our hands in no time.” He’s gesticulating wildly as he says it. It has been one of his main concerns recently. Cases of human contagion have so far been few and far between. The virus more commonly affects smaller mammals such as rabbits or mice. However, that also means that, unlike cancer research, which was what he’d done before, this was not one of the more popular or even commonly known diseases, meaning less funding by a large margin. For another, while the infection and contagion rates of the flare were low so far, it had a fatality rate of over 90% at this point. 

“Look, the pessimism isn’t going to help us find a cure. Let’s worry less about the possible mutations and more about what we have to work with now. This medication obviously didn’t completely fail, so let's see what we did right here, and go off of that.” Her optimism feels forced, but it isn’t exactly unfounded and it would be better to keep working than it would be to worry.

So they bounce ideas off of each other for a while, compare the new data with the previous sets, check and double check all parameters that may have influenced this test as opposed to previous ones. There is no sudden eureka moment but the more they work the more the mod lightens. By the end of the day, they have both added to their uncounted (and unpaid) amount of extra hours. They leave WCKD tired, but in better spirits than they arrived with, and with another generation of lab mice growing to hopefully die a less gruesome death.

As he rounds a corner on his way home and suddenly there’s a sharp pain in his forehead. He sputters and next thing he knows he’s on the sidewalk looking up at the blonde man he’d just ran into head first.

The guy is carrying a large sports bag and wearing an expression that would be most accurately described as “murderous”. 

“Sorry,” Thomas says, apologetic and somewhat contrite. “Looks like I wasn’t paying attention.” 

The guy looks at Thomas with such an intense scrutiny and suspicion that Thomas has to wonder if the dark brown overcoat and the woolen hat somehow make him look like a criminal.

“It’s alright,” the man says eventually after an awkwardly long pause and reaches out a hand to help Thomas up. “My fault. I wasn’t paying attention either. Are you alright?” 

“Fine. No bruises except to my ego and I’ve been informed that that could use some denting, so really, nothing to worry about.”

The smile on the man’s face looks odd, as if the muscles aren’t used to the direction they are being pulled in. “Well, I’m no judge on the ego, but I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

Thomas smiles too and as the stranger’s smile melts into something smaller and less strained and Thomas is hit suddenly by the realisation of how handsome the man is. His face feels oddly hot all of a sudden.

The man sends him another considering look before he says “Well, if you’re alright, I need to get going.” And with a polite nod the man vanishes around the corner.

Thomas watches him as he hurries away, feeling strangely wrongfooted as if he’d just missed something, maybe an opportunity, but for the life of him he had no idea what to do about it.

  
  
  


* * *

**NEWT**

  
  


You’d expect a shady, underground assassin network to use the backroom of a nightclub as base of operations or maybe to rent an office building under the guise of something legal. Janson had gotten a little more creative in his approach and so his organization hid itself in the cellar that building plans and the council hall did not know existed, beneath, of all things, a flower shop.

They specialize in grave decorations, just to keep with the theme.

The lady at the counter - a small, wispy, blonde thing named Lizzy who would break all your fingers twice in ten seconds, if you underestimate her - waves Newt through to the back room where he punches a code into keypad next to a door that says “storage” and then takes two flights of stairs down to where Head Office resides. 

The organization is nameless, which made it that much easier to hide. Names for groups are only good for identification and a sense of unity. The first of which they were trying to avoid and the second of which was unnecessary. No need to pretend they belong together when they all belong to Janson anyway.

Down a hallway, and then a second hallway, and then a third Newt goes, grinding his teeth and wishing he could be literally anywhere else. Every time he returns to HQ he feels like a lab mouse running a maze, only there is no exit and the only reward for being clever is not dying. 

When he reaches the door he’s been looking for, he pauses. It is open, which has happened rarely enough to be suspicious and there is a voice coming from inside.

“No, no we don’t want to be too hasty about this. It would only draw suspicion. Are you sure you can’t do anything to slow their progress?”

A pause, then.

“I see. Well, if they do become a threat to the Insurance we will have to act. Until then, I want you to keep an eye on everything they do and keep me informed of their progress. Yes, thank you. Call me, if the situation changes.” There is a quiet beep, the sound of plastic hitting wood and a long sigh.

Newt files away the conversation like he does every other piece of information he comes across that might turn out to be useful in the future. He did this while he waited for a few more minutes to not give the impression that he overheard anything, then he knocked on the door and waited to be called in.

“Ah, Newton,” says the man behind the desk. “You’re back sooner than I expected. No complications I assume?” Behind a face like a rat hides a worse personality. In all his time of knowing him, Newt hasn’t once seen one of his smiles reach his eyes. This man is Janson, the head of operations of their nameless organisation.

“None.” Newt replies in a toneless voice. 

“Excellent,” Janson says, leaning back in his chair but never quite looking away from Newt. “Well, I wasn’t expecting you until Sunday, so you can enjoy some more time off.”

Newt takes one measured breath and nods. “Thank you. I will be available when you have need for me again, of course.” 

Janson’s eyes narrow a fraction but Newt not to tense. 

“Of course you will be,” he says eventually. “Your physical is coming up. Actually, you may as well get that out of the way while you're here.”

Physical. Right. What a joke. Newt does not voice his thoughts however, instead he says, “Yes, of course, Janson. Thank you.”

“I will contact you with your next assignment through the usual channels. You’re dismissed.”

Newt nods again and turned on his heel. The less time he spends in that room the better and thankfully it seems that Janson is preoccupied with something else today, and therefore not in the mood for a more detailed report. The door closes behind him with a satisfyingly loud clicking noise, putting several inches of steel between Newt and the Ratman.

Newt does not allow himself to show his relief, for there is no place in this place where one can be sure that they aren’t being watched. Instead he starts walking down another corridor, turns left, then right, then left again, walks up a flight of stairs, then down another at the end of a corridor, until he comes to a halt in front of a white door, this one wooden, with a cross painted on it in the middle in faded paint that might have been red at some point but certainly wasn’t now.

Here, he doesn’t bother with knocking.

“Hey Clint,” he says and the man looks up from his beakers and vials to greet him in turn.

“Newt. Here for your monthly supply of happy pills?” 

Newt snorted. “Sure, whatever. Janson sent me for a check up.”

“Ah yes. Of course. Can’t have our top operative be put out of commission by something as boring as a muscle strain or a cold now, can we? Hop on the table and I’ll check you out.” He ends the last sentence with a wink which draws an eye roll from Newt, who strips off his shirt and complies anyway. Muscle strain or a cold indeed. Clint is part of a team of medical “professionals” who are in charge of the operatives’ health care. The fact that none of them were every actually trained as physicians doesn’t seem to bother Janson. Newt however, whose life relies on the competence of these people, takes a little more issue with their collective lack of professionalism. 

“Well in my totally educated and one hundred percent professional opinion, you seem to be fine.” Clint proclaims some fifteen minutes later. “Take these, once a day with food until you run out, as usual, and come back for more when you do,” he adds, thrusting a small jar of lightly purple coloured pills into Newt’s hands. “Which you should know by now I guess but whatever.” 

Newt just hums. The pills are standard issue to all organisation field operatives and are meant to heighten the senses to help them with their work. They are one of the reasons why Newt preferred libraries as a place to retreat to. Overly sensitive hearing comes with drawbacks and libraries tend to be blessedly quiet.

“Thanks,” he says shortly and pockets the pills, his mind on other things already. Janson had talked about “the Insurance” and a possible threat to whatever that might turn out to be. Newt just hopes that whatever poor bastard has somehow gotten on Janson’s personal radar knows the kind of hellfire they are dealing with, because from what he had overheard, it seems that Newt’s brief vacation would be cut even shorter very soon otherwise.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Three weeks. Newt is granted three glorious weeks of calm, rest and recuperation, most of which he spends in his dingy little apartment at the edge of town, trying to forget that there is a world outside his door at all.

His place is barely more than a bedsit. One room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Not much space for a personal touch, but Newt has few personal possessions that are not utilitarian. 

His kitchen is rarely used. Cartons with leftover take-out are stacked in the fridge and the microwave is the only piece of appliance that ever sees any use besides the coffee maker. 

The walls are that soulless eggshell white all landlords demand they be painted when someone moves out, curtains and furniture are whatever was chapest at IKEA that one time Newt went to furnish his living space. None of it really fits together but Newt doesn’t exactly care. It’s a place to sleep and nothing else.

The only thing he likes about the place is his garden. It’s small, and the soil is hard and harder to work with, but he puts work into it whenever he has the time. He is tending his admittedly, rather pathetic vegetable patch when he got the text on his work phone. 

**MEET ME AT THE SHOP IN AN HOUR. GOT A JOB FOR YOU.**

**-** ** ** L** **

He blinks twice, then groans. Normally HQ just sends him the full details of his hits in one text. That’s what untraceable phones and secured connections are for after all. If he is being called in to receive instructions in person, this job would be either highly classified, involving more foreseen complications than usual, or require special instructions for some other, but certainly no less headache-inducing reason. 

Newt takes off his garden gloves, glances one last time at his dying tomatoes, and heads inside to change and grab his ready bag. Next year he’ll try potatoes instead. Those are hardier and should be able to live without him watering them for a few weeks.

He grabs his ready bag from under the bed, heads out and locks the door behind him firmly.

More likely than not it will be a while before he returns again.

  
  


* * *

**THOMAS**

  
  


Teresa has been acting strangely for months now, switching between bouts of depression, what seems to him to be some form of misplaced guilt, and a determined working frenzy so intense, Thomas has known workaholics with less dedication. 

Something is going on there that Thomas doesn’t know about, but they are coworkers more than friends and not close enough for him to ask after her private life. Everyone who is working on this project is invested in finding a cure or at least a viable treatment, but recently Teresa has treated their slow going progress as a personal failure.

While her work ethic has seen them leaping bounds towards finding a solution of the puzzle. V1374-C, which some of the junior researchers have nicknamed the Flare because of its continuously changing flare ups of different symptoms, has been identified to attack the nervous system first, something they hadn’t even considered before, seeing as subjects mostly died of organ failure or cardiac arrest. With this new information at hand, they are making progress towards a viable cure. At least, the illness is advancing slower in their most recent batch of mice than in any before. Progress towards a true cure however, remains slow. 

“There’s nothing more we can do here today.” Thomas sighs and stretches as he gets up from his work station. His spine pops loudly at the motion and he winces a bit, straightening up. “Come on, people. Let’s pack up for the night.” 

‘People’ are him, Teresa and their two assistants. Everyone else has gone home already. Mark and Julia seem relieved, already clearing up their workstations, grabbing their coats and heading for the door.

Teresa, who had looked up startled at the noise throw him an unimpressed look, “What, already?” she says, then startles again at seeing the time. “Is it that late already?”

Thomas tries not to let his exasperation show but he’s sure he’s failing miserably at the attempt. “Yeah it sure is. Let’s put these last samples away and get something to eat. I know you haven’t eaten anything since you got here and, believe it or not, but these mice won’t get any healthier by you starving yourself.”

She stares at him for a moment before shaking her head. “No, I think I’ll stay a bit longer. I still need to finish this report and it’s better if I do it while it’s fresh in my mind.”

“Teresa.” Thomas says in his most authoritative ‘I-am-technically-your-superior-and-you-have-to-listen-to-me’ voice. By now their other coworkers have left and they are alone in the lab. “You’ve been working yourself to the bone and while I’m the last person who should be talking to you about overworking yourself, you’ll do no one any favours if you’re too exhausted to think and make a mistake somewhere. We’ve had one huge breakthrough this month already, thanks to you. No one expects you to find the cure all by yourself. You need to go home and sleep so you can be back here tomorrow with a fresh mind.”

The glare she levels at him in return almost stings physically. He needs her to listen to him though because it’s true. She has been exhausting herself and it’s gotten to the point that Thomas is concerned not only about her health but about the safety of their workplace if he lets her go on this way. So he tries a different approach.

“Look I don’t want to have to do this but if you don’t start taking care of yourself again properly I will have to talk to Paige about this.” He rubs his forehead with three fingers, trying very hard not to imagine how that conversation would go and how little he wants to have it. “You haven’t made a mistake yet, but you know we’re handling dangerous biohazards here. I can’t have you in this lab when you’re too exhausted to think clearly.”

By all things good in this world, Thomas doesn’t _ want _to kick her off the team. He is painfully aware that without Teresa, finding a cure would be infinitely harder to do. On the other hand, he also can’t let her continue this behaviour. He wouldn’t have accepted it from anyone else, not even himself. Once today he’s seen her almost drop something, a fragile test tube, containing dangerous chemicals and viral agents. She’d caught herself in time and kept alert afterwards using unholy amounts of caffeine, but Thomas couldn’t let this go on.

“You can’t do that!” shock runs through him at the anger and affront in her voice. “You can’t! I need to finish this! You know that I-” she cuts herself off but the stubbornness in her expression tells Thomas that this conversation is far from over.

“I don’t know. That’s the point, isn’t it? Look, I’d really rather you stayed on this case. Obviously you’ve been a huge help. But I have no idea what’s gotten into you recently and it scares me to be honest. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.” He sighs. “You know you can talk to me, to any of us really if you need something, right?”

She glowers at him and Thomas is stunned at the hostility in her voice when she says “What I need is to find a cure for this. But fine, if you need me to waste time so you’ll let me keep working on this-” she snaps, gets up and grabs her bag and coat.

“Teresa!” Thomas calls after her, but she doesn’t stop.

“I will see you tomorrow,” is all she says and then the door falls shut behind her and Thomas is left standing alone in the cold, fluorescent light of the lab.

He takes a long, slow breath and sinks back into the chair by one of the desks, shielding his eyes from the light with one hand. That could have gone better. Teresa must have noticed her own lack of concentration in the past few days. Thomas doesn’t see how she could have not. At least he accomplished what he’d intended and she went home before midnight for once. 

On the far wall one of the mice is digging in the wood shavings that cover the cage floors. When he walks past them and out of the lab, Thomas hopes it and the others will still be alive by morning. 

The drive home is short, uneventful and filled with dark thoughts, as is the lift ride up to his flat. He drops the keys into the bowl by the door and then stops. There is a light breeze, and from where he’s standing in the hall he can see the curtains moving in the living room.

Did he leave a window open?

He walks into the living room. Sure enough, one of the windows is open, letting the cool night air into the room. He registers this fact about half a second before he registers that he is not alone in there.

Sitting on the sofa by the window is the tall, blond man he’d run into a few weeks before.

  
And he’s pointing a gun at him.


	2. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some information is revealed and Newt and Thomas have a talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... hi? Yeah this took way longer than I expected and I'm sorry for that. Some IRL stuff keeping me from writing as much as I'd like. I'll post the next chapter as soon as I'm able, thanks for sticking with me.

**NEWT**

  
  


Later, Newt would think back and realise that he was right in assuming that this job would be unusual, and also that he was wrong about just about everything else. 

* * *

Thomas Stevens, 34, is head of a small research team at WCKD Medical Laboratories, and apparently enough of a thorn in Janson’s side to require not only the man’s personal attention and instruction on this assignment, but, for some reason that Newt isn’t supposed to know or question, it is imperative that his death be made to look like an accident. No guns, no nothing that couldn’t be explained away by bad luck or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I’m giving you a month to get this done. It’s longer than I expect you to need, but this death cannot be questioned in any way. We need him to not only disappear, but to do so as quietly as if he’d never existed in the first place.” Janson impresses not for the first time. “The last thing I need is anyone looking too closely at this. There can be no investigation. Make it as open and shut as possible.”

Newt nods along quietly and shelves is doubts and questions for later. Janson will have no answers to them. Not for Newt in any case.

When he slides Newt over a file, he almost chokes on air. The thing is brown paper, nondescript and just the same as always, if slightly thicker. It will contain additional information such as the target’s family, regular associates, typical work hours, places he frequents and anything else that might be deemed useful to know if one is in the business of scheduling somebody else’s death.

There is a photo pinned to the outside and Newt knows this man.

He’s seen him before. Twice now he has run into him by accident and twice now has Newt felt this strange fascination that he can’t quite place when he saw him. The man from the library. The man from the street.

‘So his name is Thomas.’ he thinks in some detached part of his brain. ‘Doesn’t really fit him, does it?’

He endures the rest of the conversation in silence, nodding at the appropriate times and absorbing none of what is said. Then he’s back out of Janson’s office and he just walks. He’s not sure where he’s going or where this restless energy is coming from. By all means he shouldn’t care. Doesn’t care. Of course he doesn’t. There are preciously few things he has cared about at all since coming into Janson’s care and this random man he has seen twice by accident shouldn’t be one of them. 

Once is an incident, twice a coincidence, three times an assassination contract, apparently.

But here he is, almost shaking at the idea of killing a stranger when killing strangers is what he has been doing for over a decade now. Ridiculous. He’s being ridiculous. 

He keeps walking, deeper into the Maze than he usually goes. Dimly he wonders, if he is going to find his way out again. The organization barely uses a fraction of the underground tunnel system. It spans all of the oldest parts of the city, some parts are caved in or in such a state that a cave-in is only a matter of time. Rats and other vermin live here, some parts are used by the homeless as shelters. Janson has built his hiding place in one of the nicer parts but that is like saying someone lives in the nicest part of the landfill. The tunnels are dark and damp and if Newt didn’t have night vision as excellent as he does, he’d have tripped over the uneven ground by now and maybe fallen down a shaft.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking and has no idea where he has ended up when he starts seeing light again. It seems bright to him after wandering in the dark and he stops walking and closes his eyes for a while to acclimatize himself. The muscles in his legs burn like fire and he’s short of breath, which seems odd to him. He hadn’t been walking fast after all, and it couldn’t have been that long, surely?

He doesn’t get to wonder overly much however, since a voice cuts through the silence and his thoughts with startling clarity. 

“So Page caved then, it seems?” Newt knows that voice, but he has a hard time placing it immediately.

“Not exactly, but we can’t keep losing time,” Newt’s eyes widen a little because that is a voice he has no issue placing. But what is Janson doing this far deep into the tunnels? “The situation needs to be kept under control and she has proven that she’s not capable of keeping her subordinates in line. They should have never been allowed to work on the Insurance in the first place.”

“You know how creepy it is that you are calling a genetically engineered virus ‘insurance’? What do you do when one of your pets forgets to take their pills and they drop dead, huh?”

“Well then that’s their problem, isn’t it? My better operatives know better than to disobey me. Those who don’t are always replaceable. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks in any case, but they won’t much longer if those imbeciles at WCKD start producing a cure.”

“Well, you’ve got Newton and Minho to take care of that, don’t you? That Stevens guy and the Agnes chick won’t trouble us much longer and all will go back to normal.”

“It better.” The tone is sharp and marks an end to the conversation. A moment later Newt can hear footsteps moving away from him, then a door closes and he stands in darkness again.

Five minutes later he still hasn’t moved a muscle.

What was that? Who had Janson been talking to? Insurance? Virus? Their pills?

Newt hasn’t taken his since Janson benched him three weeks ago. They were supposed to be enhancements. Steroids essentially, which gave them increased strength and the ability to focus better, but came with certain drawbacks like light sensitivity and a general feeling of both physical and emotional numbness. Newt never takes them when he doesn’t have to.

He doesn’t enjoy how numb they make him feel. It makes his job easier, he’ll admit to that. It’s harder to feel bad about what he’s doing when he’s not capable of feeling much at all.

No, the medication certainly wasn’t enjoyable, but it was a necessity, and now he’s supposed to believe that Janson has been poisoning him - all of them - with some sort of virus? Why? It makes no sense. Training a new operative from the ground up takes time and effort and all of it goes wasted if they die before they become useful. 

Newt breathes, short and gasping and it’s a good thing that Janson and whoever have left or he definitely would have given himself away. He sucks air into his lungs as if he’d just run a marathon and it does little to calm him down, but eventually his breathing slows and the rational part of his brain rears its head.

Well, this is not out of character really, is it? The only question that remains is why? Janson never does anything unless there is some direct benefit to him. What would be the benefit of feeding all of his assassins poison?   
  


‘Insurance’ he’d called it. Just another ball and chain. One more way to control them, even if they somehow manage to slip his grasp? Maybe. Newt doesn’t know. His head is spinning and he’s still fighting to push oxygen into his lungs.

Breathing didn’t use to be this hard. Is this panic, or something else? Newt doesn’t know that either. It’s been too long since he was able to feel enough to panic.

He’s lived his entire life growing up on secrets. Don’t tell. Don’t show. Don’t ask. Don’t question. Don’t think. Do as you’re told, immediately and without hesitation. If told to jump you don’t ask ‘how high’ you just do it and hope it’s satisfactory. If you needed to know you would be told, or maybe even then you wouldn’t. 

Newt is getting sick and tired of this play.

He knows his script. He will leave the Maze and he will go home, take his pills like a good little soldier and then read the file he’s been given over a cup of tea. He will find out all about all of Thomas Stevens’ habits and haunts, will plan an appropriate and discreet way to dispose of him and then put it into action. He will then return to Janson, receive metaphorical pat on the back for a job well done and life will go on as it always has.

With burning lungs and clenched teeth, Newt makes a decision.

  
  


* * *

**THOMAS**

There is a man with a gun on his couch. 

He sits there, expressionless, a glass of water that Thomas recognizes from his own kitchen in front of him on the coffee table. It’s almost empty. Apparently, the man has been here long enough to decide to make himself comfortable. 

The first thing Thomas wants to say is along the lines of “What are you doing in my flat?” or “Who the hell are you?” or “How did you get in here?” Somewhere along the way the words get stuck in his throat however, kept there by fear and anger. He swallows them and, with the stranger is still watching him like a hawk watches a mouse, Thomas asks instead “What do you want from me?”

He figures it’s little use to beat around the bush. The man would not be waiting for him after making himself comfortable, if there isn’t something he wants from Thomas. If he were just after his valuables he could have been long gone already.

The man raises an eyebrow and uses his head to gesture to the armchair that’s next to to the couch. The gun stays unsettlingly steady and pointed at Thomas’ chest.

“Sit,” he says, his tone cold but polite, as if this were a business meeting, rather than a home invasion. “There are some questions I want to ask you.”

“I think I’d rather stand, thanks.” Thomas says, voice as dry as a desert. “And don’t you think you’re overdoing it a bit? I do have office hours you could have come to if all you wanted to do was talk.”

All this prompts from the man is a raised eyebrow. “I don’t care what you do besides answer my questions,” he says, adding “Don’t lie to me, or I will shoot out your kneecaps,” after barely a pause.

He says this in such a nonchalant tone of voice that it takes Thomas a second to even register the threat. This man broke into his house through unknown means, waited here for him for unknown reasons and has had a lethal weapon pointed at Thomas since he walked through the door, and yet, illogically, Thomas is having a hard time feeling scared. It’s not that he doesn’t know that the situation he’s in is not in his favour to say the least. It’s just that, for some reason, Thomas can’t seem to register the other man as a threat. Briefly he wonders if that is how adrenaline works, or if he has actually just gone insane.

“What do you want?” he asks again, maybe a little calmer than before.

“I want to know everything that you know about Adrian Janson, something that he’s been calling ‘the Insurance’ and if there is a why to cure it.”

Thomas binks. Then blinks again, stumped. Janson?

He voices this thought out loud. “Janson? What the fuck did Janson do that would bring a dude with a gun into my living room?”

There is a twitch at the corner of the man’s lips. It may be something like a smile, but it’s gone in less than a second. “He’s done more than you would probably expect. Are you going to answer the question or will I have to prove to you that this thing isn't just decoration?”

Despite his slumbering sense of self preservation, Thomas doesn’t doubt the man isn’t joking. “Jesus! Fine. Yes, I’ve heard that name before. He was one of the investors on one of my colleagues’ previous projects. Something to do with improving the accuracy of flu vaccines, as far as I know. Somewhat creepy guy. Looks a bit like a rat. I only met him that one time and it was a pretty brief meeting in any case.”

Thomas imagines he can see displeasure in the man’s eyes, but he could just be imagining it. An instant later the other’s face was once again blank like a mask.

“That’s all you know about him?”

Thomas squints. It’s dark. He hasn’t turned the lights on and the glow of the lights in the hallway does little to illuminate his living room but when he looks closely at the man he can feel alarm bells ringing that have nothing to do with gun still pointed at his chest.

“That’s all I know about him. Somewhat shady guy. Apparently well off. Interested in influenza vaccinations for some reason. It wasn’t my project, so I didn’t question where the money was coming from or why.” He doesn’t mention that his boss or Teresa would probably know more. No matter that Thomas’ brain is insane enough not to send him danger signals right now, he’s not going to point a burglar with a gun into either of their directions.

  
  


“So what about the Insurance? Ever heard of that?” Thomas can hear the capitalization in the word, but that doesn’t mean he knows what the other is talking about.

“I’m assuming you’re not talking about health insurance or similar?” That earns him a flat look. “Then no.”

The cold emotionlessness the man exudes is starting to grate on Thomas’ composure. He’s beginning to think that nothing could phase the guy when he’s suddenly interrupted by a coughing fit. 

Thomas stays silent, watching for a moment, then another while the man coughs and coughs, violent hacking breaths that rattle in his chest and sound painful to Thomas’ ears. He’s heard them before. 

In a feat of unprecedented athleticism that without a doubt is fueled more by adrenaline than skill, Thomas’ sprints forward and rips the gun out of the man’s hand while he is still breathless and blurry eyed. It’s easier than he’d expected. The man’s grip is weak and with coughs still shaking his frame Thomas doesn’t have to work hard to overpower him. Once he’s claimed the weapon for himself he immediately takes a few steps back. He’s never held a gun before in his life, but he grips it tightly, pointing it to the ground, carefully aimed away from his feet.

He doesn’t know what he will do once the man gets his bearings back. Shoot him? How? Thomas doesn’t know the first thing about guns. Well not quite, the first thing to know about guns is that they kill people and Thomas is well aware of that. He’s still more likely to hit literally anything other than what he’s aiming at. The murderous glare that he’s receiving tells him that he might not have a choice in the matter soon however. 

As the man’s breathing slowly calms down, Thomas walks backwards until his back hits the wall. And the light switch. The overhead light flashes on, momentarily blinding him, and when he has blinked back the spots behind his eyelids and sees the guy in full light for the first time Thomas’ hand goes limp on the gun and it clatters to the floor with a thump.

The man is pale. So pale that his skin is almost translucent. Thomas can see the veins in his arms and neck easily even from across the room. They stand out, discoloured a violent black as they are. His eyes look dark, and Thomas knows it’s because his pupils are unnaturally dilated. The light has to be painful. There is a trickle of black discharge in the corner of the man’s lips. The coughing could have been explained away but this can’t be.

This man is not just sick, he’s dying. The Flare comes with a wide variety of symptoms but the dark, discolored blood and saliva is something all victims have in common. He’s seen it in a human only once before. Cases of human contamination are thankfully rare. Thomas puts the pieces together suddenly everything and nothing makes sense at once.

This man has the Flare. This man is asking about Janson. This man is desperate enough to break into Thomas’ home and threaten him with a gun just to find out information about a guy who Thomas has met only once in passing. There is a connection between all of these things and Thomas has always been quick in drawing conclusions, but he is still a doctor first.

He would not be working where he is, if he didn’t have an instinct to help and to heal.

“Lean forward, put your head between your knees and take breaths as long and deep as you can,” he instructs, then picks up the gun, silently thanks his lucky stars that it didn’t go off when he dropped it, and leaves the room without taking a look backward.

As he gathers his supplies in the bathroom, he starts to wonder about what, specifically, he thinks he’s doing here. He should be calling the police. He should be chasing the guy out of his home. He should be doing literally anything but what he’s doing now, but he has suspicions that there is more to this situation than he’s currently aware of and he’s not prepared yet to let the answers slip through his fingers. He’s very good at pretending to be a rational human being but more often than not that’s all it is - a pretense. 

He doesn’t know what to do with the gun though. Deciding to at least take the bullets out he fumbles with it for a bit, carefully pointing the muzzle away from himself at all times. It takes him a bit but once he manages he drops the bullets down the toilet and flushes them away. He pushes the actual gun into a stack of towels. It’s not anything close to a good hiding place but the thing isn’t loaded anymore and Thomas has more important things to worry about in that moment.

When he returns to the living room the man hasn’t moved, but he is staring at Thomas with narrowed eyes, looking something akin to mildly confused, or maybe disoriented.

“I wasn’t joking. Lean forward. Head between your knees and deep breaths.” It’s unsettlingly easy to switch on his professionalism. The minute he’d recognized the man’s symptoms he had gone from ‘potential threat’ to ‘patient’ in Thomas’ mind. What follows now is just routine.

The man complies. Silently and surprisingly pliant he lets Thomas push and prod at him as he takes his pulse, listens to his lungs and checks how his pupils react to light. He wishes he had something here to test the man’s blood, just because he hopes that he’s wrong in his diagnosis, though he knows he’s not.

“Where did you catch this,” Thomas asks as he works. He’s legitimately curious. The number of cases of humans catching the Flare worldwide were still somewhere in the lower dozens the last time he checked. And since the last time he checked was earlier that same day, Thomas would like to know where this unknown man came from and why he’s found his way to Thomas, the lead researcher for what was ailing him, while apparently only interested in finding the financial backer of somebody else’s project.

Something about this situation just isn’t adding up.

The silence stretches for so long that Thomas has almost given up on receiving an answer at all when the man says “Work.”

“What kind of work has you exposed to  _ this? _ ” Thomas can’t help but ask.

This time he really doesn’t get an answer, instead he gets a counter question. “So you do know what it is?”

Thomas swallows. “V1374-C. Some people call it the Flare instead. I’ve been researching it for the past 3 years now.”

The man is silent, digesting this information, eventually he asks, “So I’m dying?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Thomas growls out. The man looks up seemingly as startled by his vehemence as Thomas is himself. He shouldn’t care what happens to this man and they both know it, so why does the thought of him dying feel like being stabbed with a hot poker?

“What’s your name?” Thomas asks, trying for a different topic.

“Call me Newt.”

“Newt,” says Thomas, testing out the name. “Newt, Janson wasn’t funding flu research, was he?”

“No,” Newt looks almost sorry when he says it, but Thomas finds that that doesn’t make the implications of this realization any less awful. “No, Tommy, I don’t think he was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Don't forget to check out the photoset that goes with this fic and please leave a comment on your way out! ❤️


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